'What a fop!' said the parrot. 'You lie, you dog!'
'Neither business, Madam, nor pleasures invite me. My situation here has
been most distressing. So long as hope cheered me, I little regarded
what might be said or thought; but I tell you honestly that hope is
extinguished; and it has grown to me intolerable longer to remain in
sight of that treasure for which I cannot cease to wish, and which I
never can possess. I've grown, Madam, to detest the place.'
Aunt Becky, with her head very high, adjusted in silence, the two China
mandarins on the mantelpiece--first, one very carefully, then the other.
And there was a pause, during which one of the lap-dogs screamed; and
the monkey, who had boxed his ears, jumped, with a ringing of his chain,
chattering, on the back of the arm-chair in which the grim suitor sat.
Mr. Dangerfield would have given the brute a slap in the face, but that
he knew how that would affect Miss Rebecca Chattesworth.
'So, Madam,' said he, standing up abruptly, 'I am here to thank you most
gratefully for the countenance given to my poor suit, which, here and
now, at last and for ever, I forego.
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